No problems found in first morning of [Sarasota] voting machine audit

[eomer]

No problems found in first morning of voting machine audit

By CAROL E. LEE

[e-mail]

No problems have been reported four and a half hours into the first day of a state audit of touch screen voting machines that were programmed to be used in Sarasota County on election day.

More than a third of the 251 "votes" have been cast by State Division of Elections staff in the simulated election. The focus is on the 13 th Congressional race between Republican Vern Buchanan and Democrat Christine Jennings in which there were 18,000 under votes.

Lawyers for Jennings and Buchanan, voting activists and journalists gathered outside the voting room. They peered through windows and rotated into the room in half-hour shifts to get a closer look.

A lawyer for Buchanan, who has been certified the winner, said the smooth test indicates that there is no technical problem with the way votes were tallied on election day and debunks Jennings' lawyers' charge of a possible machine malfunction.

"We believe the test will validate the results of the election," Hayden Dempsey said.

Kendall Coffey, a lawyer for Jennings, said the problem-free morning indicates nothing and that only an independent audit of the machines by people "who are outside the controversy" could determine if there are problems.

-snip-

More...

[Febble]

1. Well, frankly that's even more suspicious

If they'd found the error, I'd have been more prepared to believe it was innocent.

It's like finding no weapon by a "suicide".

[Richard Steele]

4. "No weapon by a suicide". What an excellent analogy.

This "test" is a meaningless distraction.

The FACT is that thousands of votes DISAPPEARED in
one single race. That needs to be the focus.

[eomer]

8. Yes, and then the lawyer says...

"We haven't found a weapon so there clearly wasn't any foul play."

[Febble]

10. Welll here's an alternative interpretation

I hadn't seen this before - had you? What do you think:

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~herron/cd13.pdf

ON edit: sorry, missed papau's thread. I'll read it now.

[stepnw1f]

2. I Have No Confidence in Our Voting System

Do we Dems have to OVERwhelm the GOP's turnout just to win in every election..... hmmmmm... yah, that sounds fair.:sarcasm:

[democraticinsurgent]

3. Not even the same machines

They are auditing machines "like" those used in the actual election. Not even the same machines, which are still under lock and key.

[mom cat]

6. Not even the same machines? Wow. what a convincing test!

Not!

[RaleighNCDUer]

5. correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't the proper way to test the

machines be to get a line-by-line printout of the programming that went into it?

Running the machine won't prove anything, if there is code programmed into it that will only go into effect if the proper conditions are met, such as "if votes for Y > votes for Z, every 4th vote for Z will be deleted".

I'm not a programmer, but it doesn't seem that that would be a difficult command to insert.

[mom cat]

7. Some of the computer instructions are designed to dissapear

without a trace after the elections. MACHINES CAN NEVER BE TRUSTED!

[philb]

9. It was known that not all of the machines had problems; Only way to

determine what happened is to look at the machines that did have programming problems.
They know which ones those were. but have been avoiding doing a serious audit of the ones that had problems.

Has access to those machines been restricted since the election?

[Sancho]

11. Not surprising...polls lie, non-response error, interviewer bias!

1.) There was a week to fix the problem of machine changing what they said the first time - you can't trust their memory and they may not be REMEMBERING CORRECTLY HOW THEY VOTED THE FIRST TIME.
2.) Not every machine failed in every vote, so testing five machines doesn't deal with the NON-RESPONSE ERROR! You'd have to test ALL the machines.
3.) The testers are not real voters, they are staff. Seems like an INTERVIEWER BIAS to me.

Well, if you can't believe exit polls, then why would this test session be any different!

:rofl: